Many machines are mobile machines configured to perform one or more tasks while traveling along a ground surface, such as a road surface. A cold planer is an example of such a mobile machine. The cold planer may include a grinding mechanism that grinds a top layer of the road surface. The cold planer may include a conveyor, connected to a frame of the machine, which receives the material that was removed from the road surface. The conveyor may convey the material to another vehicle, such as a dump truck, traveling next to the cold planer. The conveyor may be rotated relative to the machine frame, such that the conveyor is positioned to deposit the material into the dump truck, for example.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,325,580 to Swisher, Jr. et al. (referred to as the Swisher patent), which issued on Apr. 20, 1982, discloses a conventional cold planer. An upper material lifting conveyor is connected to a main frame of the planer. Specifically, the conveyor includes an upper lug and a lower lug that are pivotally engaged, via a pair of conventional mounting pins, with a pair of corresponding lugs of the main frame. This arrangement allows the conveyor to rotate relative to the main frame.
The Swisher patent suffers from numerous disadvantages. Specifically, the upper lifting conveyor is relatively heavy and long. Thus it is awkward to precisely align the conveyor relative to the main frame so that the mounting pins may be disposed through the holes in the lugs to connect the conveyor to the frame. For example, if the conveyor is positioned such that the holes in the upper and lower lugs are rotated even slightly relative to holes in the lugs of the frame, it may be impossible to insert the mounting pins through the lug holes. Specialized tooling is often required to first hold the conveyor, and then to precisely locate and orient the conveyor relative to the main frame. This tooling may be expensive, may not be readily available, and may require a long time to set up and adjust.
The disclosed machine is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.